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It got me thinking about how often life gets in the way of my best laid plans, and thought, this is probably a universal issue\u2014not a Brian issue. How many times have we wanted to do something: get in shape, learn a new skill, change an unhealthy behavior\u2014STUDY MY FOREIGN LANGUAGE\u2014and simply failed within a few days of some resolute promise?<\/strong><\/p>\n To preface this discussion, I must admit that I\u2019ve basically sworn off all New Year\u2019s Resolutions. They\u2019ve never stuck, and it pains me to continue to fail all the time. I prefer “Monday’s Resolutions”. I consider Mondays to be 52 New Year\u2019s Days a year. A chance to get it better once again.<\/strong><\/p>\n Even though I despise the idea of deliberate New Year\u2019s Resolutions, I still cannot help but fall into some of the \u2018I\u2019m gonna do this differently from now on\u2019<\/em> kind of thinking. It’s contagious. Everyone is talking about it, so in the end, I can’t resist making mini-resolutions.<\/p>\n Last year, my wife and I chose to lose weight. We host a race in August, and thought that maybe we should look like a couple of people that direct races. I actually got down to my High School weight\u2026 and waist-line! It was both challenging and liberating.<\/p>\n We were, understandably and legitimately, proud of ourselves. I ran a marathon in October, and then the winter holiday season set in. My high school weight was suddenly a few pounds away\u2014then by the time I stepped on the scale 26 December\u2014I\u2019d added 10 pounds! YIKES!<\/p>\n That kind of rebound is frustratingly familiar, the way discipline can hold steady for months and then quietly unravel during a few weeks of routine changes, travel, or celebrations, leaving you staring at the scale and wondering how progress slipped so easily through your fingers. The cycle often repeats not because people lack determination, but because weight management is influenced by appetite signals, metabolism, stress, and habits that don\u2019t always respond to willpower alone, which is why many are beginning to look at more structured approaches that combine behavioral changes with medical guidance.<\/p>\n In conversations around sustainable weight control, programs that integrate nutrition planning, activity, and clinically supervised options such as compounded medications have started to gain attention, and discussions around services like Coby Health<\/a> often focus on how medical support can complement lifestyle efforts rather than replace them, helping individuals maintain consistency when motivation naturally rises and falls.<\/p>\n The real shift happens when weight loss stops being framed as a short burst of heroic effort and starts being treated more like long-term training, where setbacks are expected, adjustments are normal, and each new Monday really can feel like another practical chance to begin again.<\/p>\n Time for some dramatic action. After the holidays, I took my dogs, Wiley and Abby, for a walk. Wiley coyote is the only domesticated coyote in the Western Hemisphere\u2026actually he\u2019s a rescue, but we tell him that he\u2019s a wild coyote, and Abby is our 14 year old Lab\/Husky\/Shepard mix. Afterwards, the dogs convinced me that they needed frozen yogurt, but when I brought some back to the car, Abby was indifferent to it.<\/p>\n She did not look well, and her back legs were not working. Fear shot through me as I quickly catastrophized and raced home. I had to carry Abby into the house.<\/p>\n She did not bounce back the next day. Abby suffered from degenerative myelopathy, and it had even moved into her front legs. We decided that Friday would be her last walk. It sucked, bad. All week I slept on the floor next to her.<\/p>\n I fell into the common pattern of emotional eating. Each time I woke up, I\u2019d grab a piece of banana bread or some other snack. I didn\u2019t work out. I was so exhausted.<\/p>\n At the same time, my work life got unusually busy. \u00a0There were a few work-related dinners and lunches planned, and I don’t have to tell you that it is exceedingly hard to eat responsibly when you don\u2019t prepare your own food. Those 10 pounds became 15 in a short two weeks.<\/p>\n Here are the tapes that generally play in my head, \u201cYou suck. You\u2019re fat. You cannot stick with anything. You’re performing poorly, and you’re getting worse.\u201d<\/p>\n But, here is what I know. I cannot believe everything that I think. I can act differently than I feel or think. I know how I lost the weight. I know the path ahead of me. All it takes is action.<\/p>\n George Leonard wrote in \u201cMastery\u201d that one of the keys to mastery is to maintain a \u2018Beginners Mind\u2019. That is, don’t expect to be great at something. Expect to fail, a lot. You will fall off that horse. His examples are all based on Aikido, and two black-belts exhibiting different disciplines. One demonstrated a Beginners Mind, the other was arrogant. Who do you think learned something?<\/p>\n
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